Understanding Group Process

              This week Kat and Tyler taught the learning lesson about understanding group process.  I’m not going to lie after reading the chapter for this week I was a little nervous for the activities that they would have us do would be ones like having to cross one arm over the other, grabbing other people’s hands, and trying to untangle ourselves without letting go.  Not that these activities are not fun, but they are just ones that are well known and to be honest I find them difficult to do.  Instead I was pleasantly surprised by the activity they had us do.  It was one that I had never done before which made it exciting.  I thought the guys did a good job maintaining their composure and continuing on with class even though we were rambunctious this week.

                My favorite part of the day was probably the question of the day that Kat and Tyler posed.  It was very creative and fun.  The answers that we came up with were anything from practical to downright silly.  It’s good to have something just for fun every once in a while.

                I enjoyed the discussion about different groups that either worked well or did not and why.  We’ve all had experiences with both types of groups and it helps to be aware of the different ways that can cause a group to be unsuccessful.  Two things that came up were communication within the group and getting individuals to take responsibility for their responsibilities.

              In the chapter it gives a list of ten things that define people as a group.  I thought it was fun to think about how each of these ten things related to our peer mentor group.  After doing this I would have to agree with what Kat said in class; we are going to make an excellent peer mentor group for our students in the fall.

Problem Solving with Individuals and Social media week

Well, another week has come and gone.  Time does seem to fly by faster these days.  This week is another exciting one for all of us in UST311 because it is social media week!  Wooo!  I’m doing more tweeting on a regular basis than I usually do, so hooray for that.  Hopefully everyone will enjoy the remaining couple of days.

                The lesson this week was taught by Sebastian and Brad.  I thought you guys did a great job making sure that the directions were clear and that the class knew what was expected of them.  I also liked the fact that you took turns when explaining the activities so that you each explained one.  It showed me that you both were interested, but not stepping on each other’s toes.  Although, that could have been an entertaining and inventive way of visually demonstrating how students could implement problem solving.  Just a wild thought.  Seriously though you guys did a very good job.

                One thing that really stuck out to me in the chapter this week was the strategies for problem solving section.  To be more specific the goal setting section is what caught my attention because it reminded me of our SMART goals.  Like SMART goals the book states that goals should be attainable, clear and explicit (in other words specific), and that they need to be measurable.  There were a few things that the book says about goals that are either not specified when I’ve talked about SMART goals in the past or that were just plain never said.  The first thing was that goals should be relevant to the person.  I feel like this was not clearly stated when I’ve done SMART goal setting in the past, because it is assumed that the goals you are making mean something to you. 

Something that the book brought up that I had never heard of before was that goals should be stated positively.  I think this is a very import thing to keep your moral up when you are working towards a long term or especially challenging goal.  The first activity that Brad and Sebastian did during their lesson had to do with stating goals positively and I think that was a very good choice.

Well I think that’s all for today so I’ll end with a quote from the goal setting part of our chapter.  “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived!”

More interpersonal on communication

I think I will be making a tradition of complimenting every group that does their learning session during the week.  So, here it goes.  Katie and Coreen I think you guys did a wonderful job of making sure that everyone in the class was involved.  I also enjoyed your scenarios, because they definitely helped us realize that most situations call for a combination of interpersonal communication skills and advise giving skills.

 

On to the next topic. The next activity we did in class was to pick an individual we admire and write a list of traits that describe them.  When we compiled all of our answers together, we had a very comprehensive list of about 36 items.  There are so many more that we could add to this list with just a little more brain storming and a little more time.

 

Allie wanted us to focus on the characteristics of a helping relationship in our blog posts.  There are ten characteristics of a helping relationship that the book mentions.  I thought that some of the key ones are that a helping relationship is meaningful, that it has a clear structure, it demonstrates respect for individual self-worth, and finally that a helping relationship is designed to produce change.  Each of these is important in its own way.

 

I hope everyone had a great time at the retreat today.  I know I did!

From cultural profeciency to interpersonal communication

This week Easten taught his learning session over cultural proficiency, so I thought I would comment on what I thought was good about his session.  I thought he did a wonderful job keeping his energy up and keeping everyone enthused during the class period (I’m sure we’ve all had those classes that just drag on because there is no energy in the room).  The “All My Neighbor’s” activity that he did with us was very fun and a clever way to help us realize the some of the many similarities and differences that exist within our small group of peer mentors.  I thought that the activity was a great way to facilitate talking about differences that arise within groups.  Finally, the worksheet that we worked on in class was a helpful way to identify the things that shape our own personal culture that others may not necessarily share.  To sum this up, I thought Easten’s learning session was a great example of what we should be doing and he set the bar pretty high.

The other thing I thought I would discuss this week was the chapter in the book.  This chapter covered interpersonal communication skills.  The first important thing I took away from the chapter was that, as a peer mentor, it is vital that you do not just “give advice” to our students.  Giving advice does not allow the student to learn from their problems by themselves. 

The chapter goes on to discuss a model the book uses to help train people in the skills of interpersonal relationships and creating the helping interaction.  This model consists of five steps: skills of preparedness, skills of attending, skills of understanding, skills of responding, and skills of resolution.  Since the first skill set was covered in chapter four, this chapter only goes into the middle three skill sets.  The final set will be covered in the chapter we read next week.  Of the ones that were covered I found the skills of responding to be the most interesting.  They focus on how you can ensure that you are not just giving advice to your students.  These skills will become very handy next fall if/when any of the new students come to me for help. 

Mid-year institute and ISLE

Over the last few days we have had a couple of different opportunities to learn about different aspects of leadership and how we can apply them in as peer mentors and in our own lives as well.  Friday during the Iowa State Mid-year Institute I was able to attend the highlighting your peer mentoring on resumes and in interviews by Roger Bently.  Not only was this session pretty informative, it was partially interactive too.  We had the chance to talk to some of the other learning community members in the room using some action verbs that were provided.  I think the most important thing I got out of that session was S.T.A.R. which stands for Situation, Tasks, Actions, and Results together these make a framework that can be used to answer interview questions.

The second session I went to on Friday was Community Building in Your Learning Community by Andrea Ramos and Kari Teitjen.  There were a couple of things that really stuck out to me in this session.  One of these was the number of trainings that the WISE peer mentors take some of which may benefit us as Hixson peer mentors.  The second thing was Intent vs. Impact in communication.  Intent is what we mean to say where as Impact is what someone else gets out of what you are saying.  Sometimes these two things are not the same thing.  An example would be when people use the word “gay” when they really mean dumb, unfair, etc.  These are things that many of us do without even realizing it or how it could affect someone else and until you make the conscious decision to stop using such words.

Saturday was ISLE at the MU.  The beginning key note speaker Dr. Darin Eich was very interesting to listen to and his energy made me excited about the day.  The first session I attended was Maximizing Leadership Potential and although it didn’t sound like I would be interested in the topic I found it very useful.  We were given several chances to go through our elevator speech which is something I’ve never worked on before.

After a delicious lunch of free subway, I went to “Say Whaaaa??”  (Which if you were near me you probably heard me say the title reminded me of the minions from Despicable Me because I love them.)  This session reminded me a lot of the second session I attended on Friday and in fact it was actually taught by one of the ladies who taught the Friday session.  This one was more focused on the Intent vs. Impact. We did an exercise in which we looked at a list of phrases/words that can be offensive to groups of people.

The final session of the day I attended was about emotional intelligence.  This is a topic that I feel very familiar with yet I felt that it was still important to go and refresh my memory.  One thing I learned was that you should try to turn a complement into a request when you are working with others to try and minimize potential conflicts.

I had a great time in all of the sessions, but I think my favorite part of the day was winning a subway gift card.  I mean who doesn’t like winning things. J

MBTI Step 2: A better look

Woot MBTI!  I think we can all agree that this was an exciting week for the peer mentors all thanks to our new MBTI results.

I kind of had an idea of what I was not only from last year but also just because of the review before Debra gave us our results packet.  I was indeed an ESFP, but this step two of the MBTI goes more in depth so now I guess I am a Conceptual, Original, and Planful ESFP.  I have been carefully reviewing my results to help understand how they arrived at this conclusion.  Even now, as I write this post, I keep finding little things in the report that set off little bells in my head and make me go “That is just like me!”

Since I could easily fill a page or two explaining each facet of each letter, I will just go over one or two from each, the things that were out of range for the items, and anything else that sparked my interest.

Extraversion

Extraversion was one of my strongest traits overall.  The thing that interested me the most about it was not what parts were considered in preference for me, but the one thing that was in the middle the gregarious-intimate scale.  I was reading the characteristics that they list for someone who is in the middle and two in particular stood out to me: like large-group activities or one-on-one conversations at different times and appear outgoing at times and reserved at others.  I thought both of these “hit the nail on the head” when it comes to me.  It all depends on my mood for that day.

Sensing

Out of all my results I found sensing to be the most interesting.  Under the sensing trait I had two facets that were considered out of preference: conceptual and original.  While I was reading the details below the thing that kind of shocked me was that it said conceptual people may be more attracted to an academic career rather than being a practitioner.  This is definitely not true for me.   I plan to be a practicing child psychologist and the idea of an academic career sounds terrible in my opinion.  The other thing that was out of preference was being original which again “hit the nail on the head.”

Feeling

The thing that stuck out to me was not an extreme; in fact it was the opposite, in the facet of tough-tender I was exactly in the middle.  The descriptive points that were provided confused me a little at first but the more I keep reading them the more they make sense to me.

             Perceiving

                I was considered out of preference under the planful facet too.  I like to have a plan, but I do not have to follow my plan to a T and that is pretty much what the points were describing. 

               The MBTI is a perfect tool to help you understand yourself on a deeper level.  Not because it is telling you what type of person you are, but that it makes you think/reflect on all of the facets that make up your personality.